For the most part, were late 70s magnavoxes improving or worsening? I think Philips can hold its own against many others, at least back then. I have 2 Philips-made magnavox sets- one is a 1984 13"color, very nice picture and never needed work, and a 1978 12"B&W that I found, and fixed the vertical sync, which was rolling uncontrollably.

What year did Philips take over? The 1978 portable says it was made by Philips Video Corp, Taiwan ROC For the Magnavox corp in Fort Wayne, Indiana and the 1984 13 incher was made by GTE in Greenville, TN. Someone help me understand this please...I'm interested because I rarely see any Vintage Magnavox--Is this due to inferior quality?

EDIT- Forgot to mention that the 1978 set has better build quality than the newer one, despite being a cheaper and smaller black and white tv. It has metal knobs as opposed to plastic junk, and the chassis has more metal.

Not sure on Maggies. I have a 1979 Maggie console that is stamped Fort Wayne, Indiana, and I'm sure is "all Magnavox" . My parents 1991 Maggie console is stamped Made in the USA Greenvile,TN. IIRC didn't NAP take over GTE in the early 80's? I know they took over Sylvania and Philco.

I did Magnavox Service from 1977 to 1990.

I THINK Phillips bought Magnavox in 1979-1980.

Before the change, Magnavox sets were plagued with issues like using 1/4 watt resistors in circuits that should have used 1/2 watters, etc. Their console sets looked really nice, but the chassis were cheap. The early solid state consoles had plug-in modules like Quasar, but, they had lots of issues with bad connections between the chassis and these boards. Also, FIRE! I gave my folks a new 1973 SS 25" console with the Videomatic circuit that would raise and lower the brightness of the set according to what the little photocell under the screen would sense in the room. It ran OK for 2-3 years, then it burned a connection on the HV board that punched a hole in the back of the set! I replaced the board connectors, and hard-soldered the whole board to the chassis. Never had a problem again with it, until 1980 when it got hit by lightning, hard. I bought them a 25" Phillips-made Magnavox with remote, their first, in a fake wood cabinet that matched the living room. It used the 25C1 chassis, which in all these years, has only been repaired one time, and that was to replace the big filter cap on the power supply half of the chassis. It is still running today, 2006.

The Phillips sets were for the most part very reliable. Many I have seen have outlasted their kines. When the C4's came out with the first stereo amp chassis, they had a few issues with the power modules, but I never had any trouble fixing them. Rarely had tuner problems, or IF stuff. It was almost always Horizontal outputs, Flybacks, and vertical module failures on these sets. Once in a while, on the 19C5 chassis, I would find a dead set with nothing wrong but a single pin on the horizontal output transistor cracked away from its board connection. A quick blob of solder, and it runs on!

The 26C8 chassis was the ONE that turned around on me. A certain power supply failure (switched mode) would cause a catastrophic failure of MANY parts around the switcher. IF I missed one defective part, the whole thing would die again on start-up!

The B1 chassis series were damn good. Rarely had any problems with them. Ran one here in my home from 1988 or so until 1991, gave it to a friend, and it still is running today.

Magnavox cabinets were made in Arden, NC, here in my neck of the woods until around 1988. The sets were assembled in Greeneville, TN, and in Knoxville, TN.

I went to many training seminars with them. Good engineers, and very good tech-support.

Then the projection sets came along. Aaraugh. THATS about when I stopped doing big sets. I DID for a time, rebuild scan modules, and small signal boards for the Magnavox-built SEARS branded LXI sets in the early 90's. Then, as I stopped working on the PTV's, Phillips came out with the all-on-one-board PTV chassis in their 50" sets. No more plug-in modules. Many returned sets to Sears due to the tech having to make sometimes 2-3 visits to the customers home to fix the things!

Enough of my ramblings. Does this help?

Interesting. Thanks guys. It helps me understand better, but I still have one question. Did the original Magnavox corporation outsource manufacturing at all, and if so, is it possible they only did this on smaller or black and white TV's? Thanks

My understanding was that Magnavox sold its consumer electronics division to Philips in '75; the old company remained for awhile doing industrial/military work. I think they are gone now. Magnavox was a long time resident of Fort Wayne.

GTE owned Sylvania & Philco, based in Batavia (NY?). In 1980 or 81 they sold Philips the Philco name (for north American use anyway, lots of people seem to have a claim to it worldwide) and they licensed the Sylvania name to Philips. Sometime around then manufacturing was moved to Tennessee.

I have heard that the Philips sets could not compare as far as audio goes as they really cheaped out on the components. Magnavox became just another TV set.

I have a 1991 Sylvania Superset (19") built in TN; lots of hours on it. Aside from a repair when it was new it has had no problems.

The old Magnavox company imported smaller sets from Asia. I have a 12" bw that is pre-Philips and is from Japan or Taiwan, I forget which. It is tube type. I also have a 19" (metric) color crt, used, from an early 70s Magnavox and it was made in Japan. In the seventies the only company building a more or less full line of TV sets in America may have been GE. (eventually they imported the 12" sets, too)